It's Monday morning, and although it's only been a few weeks, I miss my routine. I think it's safe to say that no matter what your job, even Monday morning at work beats your first weekend of chemotherapy.
Until that fateful Friday X-ray three weeks ago, I would typically have been at my incredibly disorganized workspace, with a coffee and a Hershey bar (yeah, awful breakfast...) and sizing up the workload for the day. If there were nothing urgent to get on the presses, I would probably be downloading my weekend flying pictures, and checking in with Gail's blog to see what she was up to in Vancouver. And Ed would be telling me about the latest worries about his daughters, and Judy would say her warm hello, and Kim would be hard at work already; and Mike would tell us about something he read that causes cancer. I miss them.
I'm going to try to keep up with that normal part of my life, though. I've ordered a workstation for my house so that I can take some design work home, and I will try to visit the office to update some software and help out when I can.
The effects of the chemo really kicked in this weekend; I have a counter full of pill bottles for dealing with the many side effects and the pain. I'm trying to eat well and not overmedicate, but I definitely feel like I'm on strong medicine. Sometimes I'm dizzy, or numb, always tired, and nauseous, usually when I wake up. Today I will go in for the first visit to the radiological doctor, who will "design" my radiation treatments with a computer, mapping out my chest and the location of the tumor; I will be getting zapped twice a day for two weeks. There will be more side effects from that, of course.
I miss flying, too. This "logbook" is serving another purpose now, but I hope that it will one day revert to what it was. For a distraction, I picked up the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and I've been trying a few things to keep feeling like a pilot. Last night I "flew" some instrument approaches, which is good practice anytime; instrument flight is mostly about procedures, and the MS software is very realistic. I even downloaded a Tri-Pacer model, but it ain't the same. I miss the noise, the smell, the vibration... the expense and the danger, too. At least I was in control.
